1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to social networking systems, and to associated data mining methods for identifying people having similar interests or characteristics.
2. Description of the Related Art
A variety of web sites exist that provide matching services for assisting people in locating other people with which to establish a personal relationship. Typically, users of such matching services must initially supply relatively large amounts of personal profile information, such as information about their respective interests, educational backgrounds, ages, professions, appearances, beliefs, and preferences for others. The profile information supplied by the users is compared by the matching service to identify and connect users that are predicted to be good candidates for forming a personal relationship. Matching services also exists for connecting people that have related business objectives.
One problem with existing matching services is that the participants sometimes supply inaccurate or misleading personal descriptions. As a result, the users are commonly disappointed with the recommendations made by the matching service. Another problem is that the task of creating a personal profile that is sufficiently detailed to produce satisfactory results can be burdensome to users, potentially deterring users from using the matching service.